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Kim Voynar

By Kim Voynar Voynar@moviecitynews.com

Ebertfest Dispatch: The Ebertfest Round Table

The mood is upbeat here at Ebertfest this year; everyone is delighted to have Roger Ebert back after last year’s fest, when he was forced to miss the event due to health problems. This year, Roger’s back in full force, smiling and cheerful, introducing films using his computer to talk for him in its soothing Sir Laurence Olivier voice, and smilingly scolding it with a shaking finger when it mispronounces any words.
I love the atmosphere of Ebertfest. It’s all about the love of movies here — the films are in one theater, so there are no scheduling conflicts that force you to miss one film to see another. There’s no market, no rush to break stories; there are few publicists (not that I have anything against publicists or anything) and therefore no pressure to work interviews into an already packed schedule. At Ebertfest, the conversations with filmmakers are casual, sitting in the Virginia Theater, at a party, or over a relaxing dinner.


Tonight I had one of those moments where I realized just why I love this fest so much and keep coming back. I looked around the dinner table and realized that aside from myself and fellow critic Lisa Rosman, my other dining companions were all filmmakers: Karen Gehres (Begging Naked, which screens tomorrow), a 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues, which screens Saturday), two Oscar nominees (Trouble the Water’s Tia Lessin and Carl Deal), a current Guggenheim Fellow (Chop Shop’s Ramin Bahrani) and Guy Maddin (My Winnepeg). Only at Ebertfest (and perhaps Telluride on a really good day) would I share a meal and stimulating conversation with such a group of people.
Today’s schedule was busy, in a good way. The day kicked off with a panel discussion on Movie Making and Distribution in Times of Turmoil, and included a bevy of filmmakers sharing their stories of struggles to get their films distributed. Woodstock filmmaker Michael Wadleigh shared a great story about how he persuaded Warner Brothers not to make him cut his four-hour film down to under two hours by breaking in and stealing the audio tracks and negatives and threatening to set himself and the film on fire if they wouldn’t back down; Wadleigh, who since leaving Hollywood years ago to focus on non-profit work has continued to nurture his activist streak, will be presenting a lecture on Saturday morning that I plan to attend called “Homo Sapiens Report, the big picture, the last 130,000 years, the next 200.” Based on what I’ve seen of him so far, it should be very interesting.
I thought things might get heated between Nina Paley and the VP of publicity for Warner Brothers (who’s here with Wadleigh for Woodstock) when the talk turned to issues of copyright protection; Paley shared how she’s released Sita Sings the Blues under a Creative Commons license, giving anyone the permission to distribute her film, even to the extent of burning and selling DVDs. Too bad it got reined in … I’d have liked to have seen where that discussion would have headed. But very interesting panel overall, even if there aren’t a lot of easy answers to the problem of how filmmakers can both get their films seen and make back the money spent on them.
I saw three great films today, starting with Guy Maddin’s My Winnepeg, which I’d never seen. I love, love, love Maddin’s Brand Upon the Brain!, but I just might like My Winnipeg even more. The film, which was a commissioned project to make a documentary about Winnepeg, may not be, as Maddin said in the Q&A after, quite what they expected, or even quite a documentary … or rather, I’d say it’s more than a documentary. It’s a very subjective film from the perspective of this artist with a distinct vision and style; I found it mesmerizing and brilliant, and the Q&A after was so fascinating, I easily could have listened to Maddin talk for another hour.
After My Winnipeg it was time for Chop Shop, which was on my top ten list for 2008; although I’ve seen it several times before, watching it on the huge screen at the Virgina Theater with a packed house was a real treat. Following the screening Lisa Rosman, Bahrani and I headed up to the stage for a discussion about the film, which I think went pretty well (mostly because Bahrani is so incredibly smart, professional and focused that all you really have to do is toss him the right questions and let him run with it). Then it was time for dinner and great conversation, as aforesaid, and then back to the Virginia for the last screening of the day, Trouble the Water.
I saw Trouble the Water when it played at Sundance last year, and I’ve interviewed Lessin and Deal, but it was even better seeing it here, in a theater that holds 1,600 people. Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts, the film’s subjects, were onhand with baby daughter Skyy, and following the film and Q&A Kim performed two rap songs for the enthusiastic crowd. Great fun, great day.
Tomorrow is another full day, with an early morning panel that I want to listen to, a later morning panel on film criticism on which I’ll be participating, and three films: Begging Naked, The Last Command (silent film, to be accompanied by the Alloy Orchestra) and my number one film of 2008, Frozen River.
As an aside, I just want to say how thrilled I am that the fest invited Misty Upham to come out. Much as I love and admire Melissa Leo’s stellar performance in Frozen River, I think it’s gotten a bit unfairly lost in the shuffle just how important Upham’s performance was in counter-balancing Leo’s. Although it’s technically a supporting performance, as far as I’m concerned Frozen River had two stars, not just one, and Upham damn well deserved a supporting actress Oscar nomination for her turn. I’m glad she’s at least getting some props here from Roger Ebert and Ebertfest, and I’m looking forward to talking more to her during the fest.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon